There's still no foolproof way to predict who will develop dementia, but brain scientists say they have identified a new clue: Cluelessness, as in an inability to tell when people are lying or using sarcasm. A preliminary new study conducted at the University of California at San Francisco suggests that the neurodegenerative process responsible for dementia also causes deterioration of regions of the brain responsible for detecting insincere speech. "These patients cannot detect lies," study author Dr. Katherine Rankin, of the university's Memory and Aging Center, said in a written statement. "This fact can help them be diagnosed earlier." It...

Enlarge Image Lefty or righty? A new study links a larger anterior cingulate cortex (left) to politically liberal views and a larger right amygdala to conservatism. Credit: R. Kanai et al., Current Biology, 21 (26 April 2011) Politics can be a touchy topic, especially when it comes to neuroscience. Researchers who've dared to tackle questions about how people's political leanings might be reflected in the brain have often earned scoffs and scoldings from their colleagues. A provocative new study is likely to be no exception. It claims to find features of brain anatomy that differ between people who identify...

We all know that people at opposite ends of the political spectrum often really can't see eye to eye. Now, a new report published online on April 7th in Current Biology, reveals that those differences in political orientation are tied to differences in the very structures of our brains. Individuals who call themselves liberal tend to have larger anterior cingulate cortexes, while those who call themselves conservative have larger amygdalas. Based on what is known about the functions of those two brain regions, the structural differences are consistent with reports showing a greater ability of liberals to cope with conflicting...

In pictures, Obama appears to have a long scar which goes up the side of his head and over his crown. Some conspiracy theorists claim they are scars that you would see on someone who has had brain surgery. But without medical records (along with his school records and birth certificate) no one seems to be able to provide an answer as to the cause of the mystery scars. Ben Hart, a blogger for Escape The Tyranny a website which presents itself as a Social Network & Forum For Conservatives, said: 'Obama's almost done with his first term, and we...

A 2,500-year-old human skull uncovered in England was less of a surprise than what was in it: the brain. The discovery of the yellowish, crinkly, shrunken brain prompted questions about how such a fragile organ could have survived so long and how frequently this strange type of preservation occurs. Except for the brain, all of the skull's soft tissue was gone when the skull was pulled from a muddy Iron Age pit where the University of York was planning to expand its Heslington East campus. [Britain's Oldest Brain Found] "It was just amazing to think that a brain of someone...

Even long after it is formed, a memory in rats can be enhanced or erased by increasing or decreasing the activity of a brain enzyme, say researchers supported, in part, by the National Institutes of Health. "Our study is the first to demonstrate that, in the context of a functioning brain in a behaving animal, a single molecule, PKMzeta, is both necessary and sufficient for maintaining long-term memory," explained Todd Sacktor, of the SUNY Downstate Medical Center, New York City, a grantee of the NIH's National Institute of Mental Health. Sacktor, Yadin Dudai, Ph.D., of the Weizmann Institute of Science,...

GUMC neuroscientists say their novel gene therapy shows that clearing toxic proteins inside brain cells prevents plaque formation outside neuronsWashington, D.C. – Gene therapy that boosts the ability of brain cells to gobble up toxic proteins prevents development of Alzheimer's disease in mice that are predestined to develop it, report researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center. They say the treatment – which is given just once - could potentially do the same in people at the beginning stages of the disease. The study, published online in Human Molecular Genetics, demonstrates that giving brain cells extra parkin genes promotes efficient and...

The seeds of criminal and anti-social behaviour can be found in children as young as three, scientists have claimed. More researchers believe that violent tendencies have a biological basis and that tests and brain imaging can pick them up in children. They argue that, by predicting which children have the potential to be trouble, treatments could be introduced to keep them on the straight and narrow. If the tests are accurate enough then a form of screening could be introduced in the same way we test for some diseases.

Former Chicago Bears safety Dave Duerson died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest, a source with knowledge of the situation told the Tribune. His death has been ruled a suicide, but the Miami-Dade police department has yet to make the information public. Foul play was ruled out, in part because no one but Duerson was seen entering his condominium for two days before the shooting.

If you're a conservative, it might be your brain's fault. So says British scientists who scanned the brains of two members of the British Parliament and about 90 students. Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent for the UK Telegraph, reported Wednesday that those with conservative views have larger amygdalas, the area of the brain associated with anxiety and fear. They also have a smaller anterior cingulate, an area at the front of the brain associated with courage and optimism. Prof Geraint Rees, of the University College London and head researcher for the study, told the Telegraph: "We were very surprised to find...

The human brain is truly awesome.A typical, healthy one houses some 200 billion nerve cells, which are connected to one another via hundreds of trillions of synapses. Each synapse functions like a microprocessor, and tens of thousands of them can connect a single neuron to other nerve cells. In the cerebral cortex alone, there are roughly 125 trillion synapses, which is about how many stars fill 1,500 Milky Way galaxies. This is a visual reconstruction from array-tomography data of synapses in the mouse somatosensory cortex, which is responsive to whisker stimulation.(Credit: Stephen Smith/Stanford) These synapses are, of course, so tiny...

How do we explain the current sorry spectacle of a highly intelligent president who repeatedly makes bad choices and decisions? Make no mistake about it – President Obama has done just that. Ever pause and wonder how ostensibly perspicacious individuals can show remarkable errors in judgment? History is filled with people like this, proving repeatedly intelligence is no guarantee of good judgment and decision-making. Why? In the 1980s, American aerodynamicists faced a conundrum: How did the USSR, using comparatively rudimentary computers and without CAD/CAM, nonetheless closely match America's best fighter designs? The answer, not immediately obvious, was that Soviet programmers...

CHAMPAIGN, lll. – Researchers have found an association between physical fitness and the brain in 9- and 10-year-old children: Those who are more fit tend to have a bigger hippocampus and perform better on a test of memory than their less-fit peers. The new study, which used magnetic resonance imaging to measure the relative size of specific structures in the brains of 49 child subjects, appears in the journal Brain Research. “This is the first study I know of that has used MRI measures to look at differences in brain between kids who are fit and kids who aren’t fit,”...

Israeli scientists believe they have identified why Arabic is particularly hard to learn to read. The University of Haifa team say people use both sides of their brain when they begin reading a language - but when learning Arabic this is wasting effort. The detail of Arabic characters means students should use only the left side of their brain because that side is better at distinguishing detail. (Snip) Both young children and adults call on both hemispheres to help them learn a new task. And using both hemispheres is the right thing to do when reading English or Hebrew -

FINDING it difficult to revise for an exam? Help could be on its way in the form of the first non-invasive way of stimulating the brain that can boost visual memory. The technique uses transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), in which weak electrical currents are applied to the scalp using electrodes. The method can temporarily increase or decrease activity in a specific brain region and has already been shown to boost verbal and motor skills in volunteers. Richard Chi, a PhD student at the Centre for the Mind, University of Sydney, and colleagues wanted to follow up on previous research...

The researchers suggest that for religious people, thinking about God may provide a way of ordering the world and explaining apparently random events and thus reduce their feelings of distress. In contrast, for atheists, thoughts of God may contradict the meaning systems they embrace and thus cause them more distress.

THE French have elevated it to an art form, and even the British have got better at it - but chimps can't cook at all. According to one controversial evolutionary theory, early humans developed a taste for cooked food around 2 million years ago, and this set in motion a series of changes that made us utterly different from any other animal. Now the proponents of the cooked-food hypothesis are presenting fresh evidence in support of the idea - and it all comes down to how you chew. The theory, championed by Richard Wrangham at Harvard University, has divided palaeoanthropologists....

The amount of cholesterol circulating in the bloodstream is partly regulated by the brain, a study in mice suggests. It counters assumptions that levels are solely controlled by what we eat and by cholesterol production in the liver. The US study in Nature Neuroscience found that a hunger hormone in the brain acts as the "remote control" for cholesterol travelling round the body.Too much cholesterol causes hardened fatty arteries, raising the risk of a heart attack. The research carried out by a US team at the University of Cincinnati found that increased levels of the hunger hormone ghrelin in mice...

While scouring the internet for something that angered me enough to write about, I came across this pretty sweet study: ‘Thirst for knowledge’ may be opium craving The brain’s reward for getting a concept is a shot of natural opiates Neuroscientists have proposed a simple explanation for the pleasure of grasping a new concept: The brain is getting its fix. The “click” of comprehension triggers a biochemical cascade that rewards the brain with a shot of natural opium-like substances, said Irving Biederman of the University of Southern California. He presents his theory in an invited article in the latest issue...

John Huff/Staff photographer Rochester residents Ellen Edgerly, left, and her daughter Sara. ROCHESTER — A few years back, hundreds of bikers gathered in Representatives Hall in Concord to protest a proposed helmet law. Ellen Edgerly, 51, an advocate with the state's Brain Injury Association, was sitting in the middle of the room, a lone voice in a sea of leather and wild beards, when a lawmaker asked if anyone supported the change. "She stood up, passed all of these tough guys, and testified about brain injury and what it means," says Steven Wade, the association's executive director. "It took...

The Male Brain. By Louann Brizendine, M.D. New York: Broadway Books, 2010. www.crownpublishing.com. 271 pp. $24.99. Psychiatrist Louann Brizendine, currently of the University of California, San Francisco and formerly of Harvard Medical School, has published the predictable followup to her bestselling book The Female Brain. This may be the most accessible book I have ever read that has slightly more than half its length taken up with appendices, notes, references, and the index. In 135 easy-to-read pages, Brizendine lays out the basic functioning of the male brain. Despite the number of books addressing these general topics, the author stands...

Johns Hopkins researchers discover pathway in mice for epicatechin's apparent protective effectResearchers at Johns Hopkins have discovered that a compound in dark chocolate may protect the brain after a stroke by increasing cellular signals already known to shield nerve cells from damage. Ninety minutes after feeding mice a single modest dose of epicatechin, a compound found naturally in dark chocolate, the scientists induced an ischemic stroke by essentially cutting off blood supply to the animals' brains. They found that the animals that had preventively ingested the epicatechin suffered significantly less brain damage than the ones that had not been given...

Johns Hopkins researchers discover pathway in mice for resveratrol's apparent protective effect Researchers at Johns Hopkins say they have discovered the way in which red wine consumption may protect the brain from damage following a stroke. Two hours after feeding mice a single modest dose of resveratrol, a compound found in the skins and seeds of red grapes, the scientists induced an ischemic stroke by essentially cutting off blood supply to the animals' brains. They found that the animals that had preventively ingested the resveratrol suffered significantly less brain damage than the ones that had not been given the compound....

LONDON – People playing computer games to train their brains might as well be playing Super Mario, new research suggests. In a six-week study, experts found people who played online games designed to improve their cognitive skills didn't get any smarter. Researchers recruited participants from viewers of the BBC's science show "Bang Goes the Theory." More than 8,600 people aged 18 to 60 were asked to play online brain games designed by the researchers to improve their memory, reasoning and other skills for at least 10 minutes a day, three times a week. They were compared to more than 2,700...

New silken brain implants that mold to the organ's grooves and crevices like shrink-wrap could lead to better devices for monitoring and controlling seizures. "They can also serve as advanced brain-machine interfaces for control of prosthetics and other devices," said John Rogers, a professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. The new implants could transmit signals from the brain to the prosthetic, Rogers and his colleagues explain in the April 18 issue of the journal Nature Materials.

Most popular notions about the male brain are based on studies of men ages 18 to 22 - undergrads subjecting themselves to experiments for beer money or course credit. But a man's brain varies tremendously over his life span, quickly contradicting the image of the single-minded sex addict that circulates in mainstream consciousness. From his wandering eye to his desire to mate for life, here's what you need to know about guys' minds. > 5. Embraces chain of command An unstable hierarchy can cause men considerable anxiety, Brizendine said. But an established chain of command, such as that practiced by...

How carbon dioxide in the blood could be responsible for near-death experiences By David Derbyshire Last updated at 1:45 AM on 08th April 2010 Some say their life flashed before their eyes, others talk of an out-of-body floating sensation or an intense feeling of peace. Now scientists believe they can explain what causes the near-death experiences reported by thousands of patients on the operating table. A study of heart attack victims has found a link between them and high levels of carbon dioxide in the blood. Towards the light: People who have out-of-body experiences on the operating table may have...

A small system for reading and interpreting the intentions of highly disabled persons who cannot communicate normally has been developed by a team of researchers at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture. The researchers hope to develop a practical model with a price under 100,000 yen within the next few years. Because specific brain waves strengthen when a person stares at something, senior members of the Hasegawa Ryohei Neurotechnology Research Group developed a system where a person looks at blinking choices on a screen while their brain waves are measured. The choices...

February 28, 2010 Fighting Alzheimer's With A Touch of Beauty A pioneering care project demonstates how literature, music, art and love can improve the lives of dementia sufferers Rita Hayworth [Pic in URL] Margarette Driscoll In her heyday, Rita Hayworth was known as the “Love Goddess”: so explosive was her appeal that her image was placed on the first nuclear bomb to be tested on Bikini Atoll after the second world war. As befits one of the world’s most glamorous women, she danced her way through 61 movies and five husbands. She was a pin-up for American servicemen and is...

Most people have three varying images of psychology. One is of a scientist poring over notes derived from a patient -- the Robin Williams-in-"Awakenings" brain specialist. The second is of a patient, lying on a divan, telling a psychologist stories about her parents' unstable marriage -- the therapist. The third is of a patient and her psychologist in flagrante delicto. The truth is somewhere between the first and second images. Psychology is a field that is part science, part hand-holding and lots of speculation. The truth is that we know very little about the inner workings of the mind, and...

Scientists have identified areas of the brain that, when damaged, lead to greater spirituality. The findings hint at the roots of spiritual and religious attitudes, the researchers say. The study, published in the Feb. 11 issue of the journal Neuron, involves a personality trait called self-transcendence, which is a somewhat vague measure of spiritual feeling, thinking, and behaviors. Self-transcendence "reflects a decreased sense of self and an ability to identify one's self as an integral part of the universe as a whole," the researchers explain. Before and after surgery, the scientists surveyed patients who had brain tumors removed. The surveys...

Scientists have identified areas of the brain that, when damaged, lead to greater spirituality. The findings hint at the roots of spiritual and religious attitudes, the researchers say. The study, published in the Feb. 11 issue of the journal Neuron, involves a personality trait called self-transcendence, which is a somewhat vague measure of spiritual feeling, thinking, and behaviors. Self-transcendence "reflects a decreased sense of self and an ability to identify one's self as an integral part of the universe as a whole," the researchers explain. Before and after surgery, the scientists surveyed patients who had brain tumors removed. The surveys...

Scientists have identified areas of the brain that, when damaged, lead to greater spirituality. The findings hint at the roots of spiritual and religious attitudes, the researchers say. The study, published in the Feb. 11 issue of the journal Neuron, involves a personality trait called self-transcendence, which is a somewhat vague measure of spiritual feeling, thinking, and behaviors. Self-transcendence "reflects a decreased sense of self and an ability to identify one's self as an integral part of the universe as a whole," the researchers explain. Before and after surgery, the scientists surveyed patients who had brain tumors removed. The surveys...

People are afraid to lose money and an unusual study released on Monday explains why -- the brain's fear center controls the response to a gamble. U.S. | Science | Health | Lifestyle The study of two women with brain lesions that made them unafraid to lose on a gamble showed the amygdala, the brain's fear center, activates at the very thought of losing money. [...]

Determinism Absurd 45. Leaving God out of it, I still do not believe in freewill. I believe in psychological determinism. There are no facts of psychology which justify the denial of freewill. 46. Medical men say that a man is, for good or evil, what his brain cells make him. Not all medical men say that. Those who do may know their physiology, but they betray lamentable ignorance of psychology and philosophy. Brain cells are still brain cells, whether they are living or dead. If they are dead, they cannot make a man anything. If they are living, they owe...

Children who are ambidextrous, using either hand with the same ease, may be more likely to have mental health, language and academic problems than their peers, according to a new study. The researchers say the findings may help teachers and health professionals identify children who are particularly at risk of developing these problems. The researchers aren't sure what is behind this link, though they suggest differences in the brain between ambidextrous individuals and those who have a dominant hand may play a role. In fact, scientists aren't sure why some people can use both hands equally well (with no dominant...

A hot new trend in fitness is hitting retirement communities in Minnesota, but this is a workout for your brain. As one ages, one of the things that can sometimes begin to fade is the memory. But now there's a workout for the brain that really gets the wheels turning. It's new and now part of the wellness program at Friendship Village in Bloomington. Bob, 91, and Mary Morris, 89, have made the Dakim Brain Fitness program part of their weekly workout. Mr. Morris goes for it five days a week. It's hooked into the internet and set-up like a...

Two brain areas fail to connect when children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder attempt a task that measures attention, according to researchers at the UC Davis Center for Mind and Brain and M.I.N.D. Institute. "This is the first time that we have direct evidence that this connectivity is missing in ADHD," said Ali Mazaheri, postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Mind and Brain. Mazaheri and his colleagues made the discovery by analyzing the brain activity in children with ADHD. The paper appears in the current online issue of the journal Biological Psychiatry. The researchers measured electrical rhythms from the brains...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Blocking the function of an enzyme in the brain with a specific kind of vitamin E can prevent nerve cells from dying after a stroke, new research suggests. In a study using mouse brain cells, scientists found that the tocotrienol form of vitamin E, an alternative to the popular drugstore supplement, stopped the enzyme from releasing fatty acids that eventually kill neurons. The Ohio State University researchers have been studying how this form of vitamin E protects the brain in animal and cell models for a decade, and intend to pursue tests of its potential to both...

SANTA FE — Members of a New Mexico family are suing an Española funeral home after they found their grandmother's brain in the bag of personal effects given to them after her death. The discovery was made the day after the interment, when relatives "smelled a foul odor coming from the bag" they received from DeVargas Funeral Home and Crematory of the Española Valley, according to a lawsuit filed on behalf of four family members in state District Court in Albuquerque. The bag had been left inside a family member's truck overnight. When family members opened it, they found, along...

Scientists have discovered how to “read” minds by scanning brain activity and reproducing images of what people are seeing — or even remembering. Researchers have been able to convert into crude video footage the brain activity stimulated by what a person is watching or recalling. The breakthrough raises the prospect of significant benefits, such as allowing people who are unable to move or speak to communicate via visualisation of their thoughts; recording people’s dreams; or allowing police to identify criminals by recalling the memories of a witness. However, it could also herald a new Big Brother era, similar to that...

The NFL is partnering with Boston University brain researchers who have been critical of the league's stance on concussions, The Associated Press learned Sunday. The league now plans to encourage current and former NFL players to agree to donate their brains to the Boston University Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy, which has said it found links between repeated head trauma and brain damage in boxers, football players and, most recently, a former NHL player. "It's huge that the NFL actively gets behind this research," said Robert Cantu, a doctor who is a co-director of the BU center and...

A WOMAN has called on police to investigate after a needle was found in her 11-year-old daughter's brain and she believes it may have been inserted by someone 10 years ago. The girl had the needle successfully removed in an operation at Chengdu Military General Hospital in Sichuan Province, Chengdu Evening News reported yesterday. The needle had impaired the girl's physical and mental development. She has the intelligence of a child of three years old, according to doctors cited in the report. The mother Yang Xiaohui told the newspaper her daughter often cried and ran a fever, which she had...

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Children who don't show normal fear responses to loud, unpleasant sounds at the age of 3 may be more likely to commit crimes as adults, according to a new study. Yu Gao and colleagues in the United States and the United Kingdom compared results from a study of almost 1,800 children born in 1969 and 1970 on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius to criminal records of group members 20 years later. At age 3, the children were tested to gauge their level of "fear conditioning," or fear of consequences. The idea is that children...